


Partnerships

by akire_yta



Series: promptfics - thunderbirds are go [183]
Category: Thunderbirds
Genre: Brotp, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-10
Updated: 2017-11-10
Packaged: 2019-01-31 14:28:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 2,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12683760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akire_yta/pseuds/akire_yta
Summary: prelude gave me a bunch of prompts off a meme list for the brotp which ended up being more fic than meta





	1. Chapter 1

1.   _Who rocks the Ferris Wheel seat and who flips out and begs them to stop_?

It is a rule of their friendship that John’s job is to be the voice of reason and Penny is supposed to act as the terrible warning. John had complained that going to an old-fashioned travelling fair was puerile, and then once she had got them past the gate, he complained that English fairs weren’t a patch of the ones they got in Kansas when he was a kid.

Penny had just latched onto his arm and batted her eyes until he went and won her a gaudy teddy bear off the water pistol game.

“Having a friend good at physics is almost as enjoyable as a friend who can count cards,” she said, stroking the bear’s downy hear.

John pulled her closer to grumble in her ear.  “That’s the kind of thinking that got us banned from Monte Carlo.”

Penny just wiggled under his arm.  “No, that’s the kind of thinking that needs to go on  _that_. Come along,” she added briskly, changing their course.

John fulfilled his role, rolling his eyes whenever she glanced his way as they waited for a carriage and climbed aboard.  “Oh hush,” she teased, nestling up to him as the ferris wheel jolted and started the slow climb into the dusky night air.  “Big and round and up in the sky, this must feel like almost like home.”

She felt John buff a light, affectionate kiss against her hair.  “If this was like home,” he said in a tone she’d come to respect.  “I wouldn’t be able to do this.”

He jolted his entire body, leverage and momentum combining to make the carriage swing wildly. Penny squealed, more delighted than startled, clutching to him just because she could.  Below, someone yelled up at them to stop.

John ignored them for one or two more beats of sway before settling back down, tucking her back against him as the carriage steadied to a gentle sway.  “You’re going to get us thrown out of the carnival,” she muttered, poking him gently in the rib.

“ _Just_  like Monte Carlo,” he said, sounding so self-satisfied that she had to pinch his ribs, setting the carriage swaying again.


	2. Chapter 2

6.   _Who takes photos of the other while they sleep?_

Penny knew what it meant, that gentle, almost genteel, snore from the sofa across from the armchair she’d claimed for herself.

Her heels lay abandoned on the rug next to his far too sensible oxfords.  She tucked her bare feet up underneath her, leaning on the armrest to better take in the dark shadows under John’s eyes, the way his hands were lax where they were crossed on his chest.

She watched the steady up-down of his ribs for a long time, captivated by the paleness of his wrists and the slow rhythm of his breathing.

It was always easier to get him to come home with her after a week like theirs, the promise of solitude too tempting after days surrounded by cries and screams and the void their sudden cessation left.

Penny’s compact is on the low table between them, and a sudden impulse has her plucking it up, angling the camera to record, capture the moment of him here, alive and at the closest he now came to peace.

Only once the image was safely hidden away from the world did Penny rise to drape a soft blanket over his legs.  John sighed but did not wake, even when Penny brushed a loose, unstyled lock of hair off his face.

Retreating back to her chair, Penny curled up once more, too exhausted to do anything else but guard his rest.


	3. Chapter 3

13.   _Who initiates duets? and who is the better singer_?

It was only through the  _excessive_  application of the best of a bottle of glenmorangie at the very end of a  _very_ stressful finals week did Penny finally uncover one of John’s better kept secrets.

“I thought you said your brother was the pianist,” Penny announced herself as she plopped down onto the bench, a rather good bottle of champagne clutched in her fist.  She’d lost her glass half a bottle ago, but she wasn’t going to let that slow her down.

John shrugged, rocking against her slightly as he sent his fingers flying up the keys in a pleasant little ditty.  “He’s the only one who really stuck with it, but Grandma insisted we all learn.”

Penny rested her buzzing head against his shoulder.  “Serenade me darling,” she ordered with a wave of her bottle.

It took her a long moment to recognize the new tune he segued into as seamlessly as a man possibly too drunk to stand could.  “Darling,” she said flatly, straightening up as much as a girl definitely too drunk to stand could.  “Are you playing me  _show tunes_ ,”

John leaned in, cheeks flushed, to rub his nose against hers.  “You’ll never be old hat, that’s that, but baby, you’re timeless to me,” he crooned, mostly on key.

Penny wasn’t made of stone.  But any accusations that she was word perfect on a Broadway number are obviously a product of far too much wine.


	4. Chapter 4

17.  _Who is more protective?_

Penny stepped with the speed of a boxer in front of the old lady dripping with too much jewellery and gin who had a beady eye on what she’d identified as the softest target in the Tracy family lineup.  Penny’s smile was bright and calm and endearing as she deftly caught the old bird’s elbow and deflected her trajectory.  “Oh, Mrs Chalmers, you  _must_ meet Captain SIngh of the GDF and tell him of your recent trip…”

Her pocket buzzed discreetly, a message on her compact.  She caught John’s eye, unerringly tracking him to where he was lurking in the shrubbery, and gave him a small nod and a wink.  

He blew her a kiss, blink-and-miss-it-fast, and disappeared from the edge of the party.


	5. Chapter 5

18)  _Who talks to the other while they are sleeping?_

Scott had wisely collared Gordon to share the other snowcat with him, leaving John to clamber in next to Penny and pull the door shut, sealing out the worst of the snowstorm until it was safe to continue on.

It was comfortable to spoon together, and John drifted off easily.  He woke just as smoothly, an instinct to respond to voices too finely developed after all his time on Thunderbird Five to be stopped by mere sleep.

Next to him, Penny sighed in her sleep.  “And onion rings,” she whispered like it was a big secret.  “Fried onion rings, yessss….”

John propped up his head on one hand, studying what he could see of her features in the light from the controls.  “Penny?” he tried without much effort.

She shifted in her sleep, burrowing even deeper under the emergency blanket.  “I don’t know if blowing them all up was a good idea.”

John yawned and patted her shoulder as he settled back down.  “Blowing things up is a good idea.”

“But Sherbert wanted to do it,” she whined as she rolled and pressed her face against his chest like a heat seeking missile.

“Call me good dog and there shall be  _words_ , Creighton-Ward,” he grumbled even as he pulled the blanket tighter around them.  There was no response but a snore. John patted her head and let himself drift back off to sleep.


	6. Chapter 6

19)  _Who drives and who has the window seat?\_

“Parker makes it look easy,” Penny almost snarled, pushing off the back seat to lean so far over John’s shoulder she was almost in his lap.

John was wishing he was back on Five; space-stations didn’t have accelerator pedals.  “Pen, darling, not helping,” he said, trying to shrug her back into the back seat.

She was undeterred, sliding instead down his arm to jab at the side-panel controls.  In front of John, the HUD display changed to a targeting lock.  John didn’t need to look to know that Penny was grinning too.  He just punched the pedal to get them into range.

Penny’s fingers hovered over the firing button. Poaching one’s staff was bad enough, but kidnapping Parker was simply  _unacceptable_.


	7. Chapter 7

_20) Who falls asleep in the others lap and who carries them to bed?_

Penny was a surprisingly heavy weight for such a short person.  Gordon squared his shoulders, but before he could try for the bridal lift, John brushed past him to bed down, hoiking her up over his shoulder, fireman style.

“Darling, what did we say about you doing this?” she scowled through gritted teeth.

“That you liked the view of my ass,” John replied evenly, settling her more securely.  “Also, you’re not walking out of here on that ankle.  Gordon, get her shoes.”

Penny, resigned to his fate, took the consolation prize of slapping that ass just to hear Gordon splutter and race after them.


	8. Chapter 8

_21) Who cuts the others hair?_

“There are people who would  _pay you_  to let them cut your hair.” 

Penny caught John’s eyes in the mirror.  He was absorbed in his work, gently snipping almost strand by strand to clean away the split ends and uneven edges.  “Yes, well, in my line of work you get rather cautious about who is holding a sharp blade inches from the nape of your neck.”

John paused a moment, then, nodding, combed out the next length of long golden hair.


	9. Chapter 9

27.   _Who orders take out at two in a morning? and who wakes the other up at three in the morning to go downstairs with them to get a glass of water because it’s too dark_?

John lives on a time not known to any map.  “You are lucky London is the city that never sleeps,” she scolded as they walked across the echoing hotel foyer and out onto the street.  Even at 2am, she could hear the sound of voices in the distance, the faint thump of a beat.

“That’s New York.”

“London was there first,” she corrected just as quickly, turning the corners confidently despite the first wisps of a fog rolling in off the Thames.  “Also, you’re lucky this was the city of  _my_ mis-spent youth.

John laughed and draped a warm arm over her shoulders.  “You forget, I was there for most of the unexpurgated highlights.”

Penny rolled her eyes as the neon frontage came into view, warm greasy steam spilling out to mingle with the grey fog.  “For using the $20 words after midnight, I’m buying,” she told him, stepping out from under his arms and up to the counter, heedless of his mild grumble.  “Two lamb kebabs with everything,” she told the grinning face behind the counter.  “And make my ridiculous friend here’s a large.”

 * 

Penny woke to the feeling of her tongue sticking to the roof of her mouth.  The baklava he’d pressed on them as he’d handed over the kebabs had been especially delicious eaten as they had been in their pajamas, sat on the floor next to his bed.  But now she was regretting their sticky sweetness.

She paused in the bedroom doorway, then turned away from the path to the kitchen in the suite towards where she could just make out the lump that was John under the covers.  “John,” she whispered, not even bothering to shake him.  Movement he could sleep through, but never voices.  “Wake up.”

“What?” grumbled a pillow.

“This penthouse is ridiculous, even by my standards.  Where’s the kitchen again?”

John didn’t even bother throwing back the duvet.  He just wrapped it around his shoulders, opening it only so far as to engulf her too, before steering them sleepily down the hall.


	10. Chapter 10

30.  _Who is embarrassed when they have to wear their glasses and who thinks they look super cute_?

“Shut up,” he muttered, turning away.

“Oh, don’t” she cried as he went to take them off.  “I think they’re adorable.”

He scowled at her in a way she’d never tell him came off more as a pout.  “They’re not adorable, they’re a medical necessity after long-term exposure to zero-G.”

She pushed them back up his nose from where they’d started to slip down.  “Adorable,” she said in a tone that brooked no arguments.

He blushed but stopped arguing.


End file.
